Companies asked to comply by the UK Home Office

Frequently Asked Questions

Welcome to TISCreport! If your organisation has received a letter from the Home Office asking you to submit your modern slavery statement then this FAQ is for you. We are building a bank of questions and answers that are commonly being asked and will post them here. 

What exactly is TISCreport?

TISCreport is the world's largest Transparency In Supply Chains Register. We work with the Home Office, Welsh Government, and numerous other UK Government Departments. Our mission is to join compliance with Transparency and Human Rights legislation at the top to vulnerable workers on the ground. We're doing this all over the world with a rapidly growing community of businesses who believe that there is no room for exploitation of any kind in their supply chains. The Home Office has launched a self-reporting registry for Modern Slavery Statements. However, TISCreport remains the only register that tracks which companies have to comply for Section 54 of the UK Modern Slavery Act, Payment Practices Reporting Regulations, Gender Pay Gap reporting and many other regulations. We report to the relevant authorities on compliance related metrics.

We have a full set of FAQs available for you to find out more about us and our mission.

Why do I need to authenticate my account?

You can anonymously submit your statement but this will not show that an authorised officer of your company has submitted the official statement to your buyers and the public using our register. As such it would be labeled with a low confidence rating until it is authenticated (at least partially, which can be done for free at affiliate level). In order for us to confirm your compliance statement we need to be able to verify your identity in relation to your organisation to the required level of authority.

TISCreport has agreed a two step authentication process with the UK Government Digital Service. The first step is to register as a user. The second step is to authenticate your user account for the company (or companies) you wish to administer (i.e. confirming the authority of the officer representing your company).

Partially Authenticated Submission By Affiliate membership (free):
a) Register via: https://tiscreport.org/user/register
b) Click on your workspace: https://tiscreport.org/workspace
c) Add your company, click “Select a Subscription to Validate & instantly save changes”
d) click “Affiliate Free account” and validate as affiliate using one of the two free methods outlined.
e) Upload your statement
f) Add your next subsidiary and repeat free authentication method.

Fully authenticated submission by paid membership (extremely good value for companies taking transparency seriously!):
The pricing structure for this is £200+VAT for up to two subsidiaries, £400+VAT for up to 5 companies, £1500+VAT for up to 20 subsidiaries. It is intended to enable procurement and compliance teams to save significant time in checking their suppliers for compliance related risks.
a) Register via: https://tiscreport.org/user/register
b) Click on your workspace: https://tiscreport.org/workspace
c) add in your leading Group company and click “Select a Subscription to Validate & instantly save changes”
d) Select the appropriate membership for your group
e) for groups with 10 plus paid memberships, send us your list and we will set up your dashboard for you and guide you through our simple authentication service!
f) Take a look at the compliance of your suppliers so that you can report your baseline for next year’s MSA statement.

Do I have to submit my statement to two sites?

No. We've got good news for you: you don't have to share with two different sites at all. Instead you can simply tick a box within your TISCreport account and our systems will share your statement to the Modern Slavery Registry automatically.

We have implemented this useful functionality as part of the UK Government Digital Service (GDS) directive to "Ask it Once" (we worked closely with GDS to develop TISCreport so that it would integrate directly into GOV.UK digital infrastructure and systems).

How do I know which subscription level is suitable for my organisation?

At the very basic level, TISCreport is free for you to use to register your compliance with the UK Modern Slavery Act. So if you have been given no budget for meeting the obligations set out by Section 54 of the Modern Slavery Act, you can still make a difference. We've created the Affiliate account so we can partially authenticate you for administering your organisation without having to charge you. You can also monitor your tier 1 suppliers and see their compliance statements for Section 54. 

However, for those who do have an available budget for tackling modern slavery in supply chains, we can really add value to your compliance and finance teams, saving time and energy by gathering non-financial data. You can also gain advantage by accessing increasing intelligence from the TISCreport community, some of whom share the same suppliers and buyers as you. A full breakdown of membership features and benefits should help you determine what is best for you, and if you need more information just give us a call on (+44) 117 9273113.

And if you need to provide services to your own clients using TISCreport data and services, you can also add a commercial subscription to your membership account. Contact us for more details.

TISCreport is a B-Corp Social Enterprise with a mission to end modern slavery in the world's supply chains. A full set of FAQs are available on TISCreport to answer other questions you might have. However you choose to join the Transparency Movement on TISCreport, thank you for joining with us.

Can I track the compliance of my suppliers on TISCreport?

Yes! You can start using the dashboard within your account as soon as you've subscribed to one of the membership levels. By uploading your supply chain into the dashboard you can start tracking your suppliers. Paid memberships provide access to more features and benefits than the free account. However you can see modern slavery statements, B-Corp and Living Wage status of all of your suppliers for free.

We have received more than one letter because we have subsidiaries over £36M turnover in our Group. Do we need separate accounts?

No. You can either create a completely separate free account for each entity OR once you complete the free affiliate authentication process for the first company it will enable you to add more subsidiaries. You can administer each of those subsidiaries on the same workspace as long as you are able to authenticate using one of the subscription levels for each subsidiary. Many large Groups administer their subsidiaries this way. Once you have been authenticated your statement submission will be added to our report to the Home Office. 

The alternative is a paid membership (depending on how many entities you have), in which case we can set up your workspace for you. If this is something you wish to do please let us know - we have Partner level for less than 20 subsidiaries and Vanguard level for those with more. The authentication process is by registered letter, with no need to share supply chain data or add code to your website.

If you need help setting up your workspace for multiple subsidiaries, don't hesitate to get in touch. We'll be very happy to help you. We also have onboarding services if you need help adding your suppliers. Call ((+44) 117 9273113) or drop us a line and we'll come right back to you.

We've found out that our statement is out of date/non-compliant. Can we upload another?

Yes. If you go to your account you will be able to add another statement, and if you assign the correct financial year to the statement then the new statement will supersede the old one.

1) Simply go to "My workspace".

2) If you haven't completed your subscription process, please do so by following the instructions appropriate to your chosen subscription level.

3) On your workspace go to tasks, select "Submit Statement"

4a) If you are uploading a file, select "Upload File" and then "Upload"

4b) If you are adding the URL for your new statement then select "Enter URL" and add the URL for your new statement in the "Statement URL" box.

5) In both cases make sure that you select the correct financial year. This will ensure that the latest document will be filed against the right financial period.

6) Then select "Attach Statement" or "Upload Statement"

7) Click "Finish and Save"

We need help in drafting our Modern Slavery statement. Can you help?

In the letter you received from the Home Office, you will have received a code for use before the 19th November, where there are resources to help you draft your statement.

Additionally, while we are not legal experts but we've seen many statements that we class as best practice. If we know your sector, we can help you locate example statements in your sector that we hold on TISCreport so that you can get an idea of what else you can do to improve the impact of your compliance beyond basic tickbox compliance.

We currently have an up-to-date statement published on our website. Is there any more that we have to do in order to comply with legislation and pass the upcoming audit 31 March 2019?

It is not mandatory to submit your statement to TISCreport. However the Home Office have asked companies to register with us because we're helping with their planned audit on the 31st March 2019. As a result a vast proportion of companies with existing compliance statements (with similar letters) are setting up accounts on TISCreport so that they can submit their statements and statement URLs as proof of compliance against their company numbers. 

Once you do so (you will need to subscribe to a membership account, which can be done for free), we will be publish your statement with a high level of confidence on your public TISCreport profile. You will also be able to check your suppliers' compliance using the free dashboard you get access to as an affiliate member.

If you haven't already checked the resources provided by the Home Office to ensure that your statement itself is compliant then it would probably be a good idea if you did so. A vast number of companies have interpreted Section 54 differently, and you'll find the guidance provided really helpful.

What is your relationship with the Home Office?

In 2015 we were asked by the Home Office back to create a self-sustaining solution to help monitor compliance with Section 54 of the UK Modern Slavery Act. It would have cost the UK tax payer several million pounds to create a Modern Slavery statement repository within UK Government. Our social enterprise, Semantrica Ltd, committed to creating an open data register, TISCreport, where the cost would be borne by those in the private sector who could afford to pay. Zero taxpayer money has been spent developing TISCreport.org and we rely on membership fees to continue our Supply Chain Transparency work. 

Our official relationship with the Home Office is now through our seat on the UK Home Office Transparency In Supply Chains Advisory Group. This feeds into the Modern Slavery Strategy and Implementation Group (MSSIG). We also report regularly on compliance figures back to the Home Office Modern Slavery Unit. 

We have opted for Affiliate Status via the TISCreport logo. Where does it need to go?

The TISCreport logo (and generated code) just needs to be somewhere on your site close to where you have the link to your statement. So it can be applied to either your home page where that link is, or the Modern Slavery statement page of your site. This will enable us to keep checking for statements going forward in an automated way. It doesn't need to be on every page.

Please note that Section 54 of the Modern Slavery Act as it stands requires that your link to your actual statement is on your home page for full compliance. Please check the Home Office resources to make sure everything else is correct (including the signature from a member of your board).

Our company doesn't have a website and so we have no URL. What do we do?

Many companies without websites use our site to point people to when asked for statements. All you need to do is upload your statement using the "Upload" tab. You will also want to do this every year for as long as the legislation requires it.

Do we use the Home Office code on your website or ours?

The Home Office code is just for logging into their resources portal on the Home Office site. You do not need to use it elsewhere and we at TISCreport do not need to know it in order to enable you to register with us.

Our company doesn't have a UK Website and we don't want to add our statement to our non-UK site. Can we use your site instead?

We're not lawyers, and we cannot say how the Home Office will interpret your particular situation or your implementation of the compliance requirements. However it is our understanding that law expects that the statement will be on whatever corporate site you have, regardless of which language or country it is for. You should get legal advice if you are unsure.

The option for making it available to those who ask for your statement is only applicable for those who have no website at all. If it helps, we have many members who have published statements on their non-UK sites (Japan, US, Australia, Germany etc). 

How do I add suppliers to my dashboard?

1) Go to https://tiscreport.org/

2) Click "Workspace"

3) If you have added your organisation already, click "Options"

4) Select "Organisation Dashboards"

5) Select the "Supplier Dashboard" radio box and click "Create". You now have a supplier dashboard and you're ready to upload your suppliers!

6) In the "Overview" tab, page down and  either search for your suppliers manually and add them one by one OR you can upload them via csv. For CSV Import click the "CSV Import" button and follow the instructions. The more you upload the more you will learn about your suppliers.

7) Once your suppliers have been uploaded the system will do an intensive matching process to ensure that we have identified the correct financial entity. Any unmatched suppliers will appear in your "Need Linking" tab. You may need to invite these suppliers to verify their full company names and details to ensure that you are tracking the right financial entity.

 

8) Verified Suppliers will provide you with even more supply chain insight than those that are unverified. You can use our mailmerge templates to invite them without having to share email addresses with TISCreport.

How do I upload a statement for my company?

1) Register yourself as a user, using your corporate email address rather than a private one: https://tiscreport.org/user/register

2) Once logged in, click "Workspace"

3) Add your organisation to your workspace using the search. 

4) Click the "SUBMIT STATEMENT" button next to your listed organisation.

5) You can then either add the URL of your statement or upload a copy of your statement using the "Upload File" or "Enter URL" tabs respectively.

6) If you are uploading a file, use the document browser to locate the correct file, select it and then click "Upload". Enter the appropriate financial year and then choose if you want to share your statement with other modern slavery repositories.

7) Click "Attach Statement"

8) and finally "Finish And Save"

 

 

 

I've accidentally used my personal email address. How can I change it to my corporate address?

You can actually do this via your account:

Account > Settings

and you can change your email address there using your password.

You can also get a new password if you don't have it handy here:

https://tiscreport.org/user/password

Why has the Home Office asked our company to register with TISCreport?

Your company was requested to register with TISCreport by the Home Office because we are helping them to monitor compliance with Section 54. Using TISCreport to evidence your compliance will reduce the cost to the taxpayer. It will also enable you to share your statement directly with the Modern Slavery Registry with a single click. Unlike other repositories, our register was built to authenticate company compliance, being built to UK Government Digital Service standards. 

As you may be aware, there is currently no Government-owned central repository for companies to evidence their compliance because there was no provision in the legislation for such a repository. The TISCreport register was created in 2015 by our social enterprise, in partnership with the UK Government Digital Service using their standards, to fill that gap. This was done without use of any Government funding, and to become a funding stream for the UK Anti-Slavery Helpline through membership funds raised from businesses that could afford it. Whilst the UK Modern Slavery Act Transparency in Supply Chains clause may be changed as a result of the review of Section 54, this may or may not result in the creation of a Government (taxpayer) owned register. The gender pay gap register maintenance tender has been capped this year at £1.6M (inc VAT per year). We hope to continue to save the taxpayer at least that much a year with our work whilst we help companies reduce their supply chain risks through their transparency. 

Why do I need to share my supply chain?

Section 54 of the Modern Slavery Act is focussed on transparency in supply chains.  We're a Transparency in Supply Chains register. Tracking compliance documents are only part of what we do (we work with the Home Office for monitoring compliance with the Modern Slavery Act). Our system aggregates potential non-financial supply chain risks and makes it available to buyers.

We enable companies complying with Section 54 to simultaneously use their supplier data to:

  1. evidence their compliance (sharing suppliers is an act of supply chain transparency)
  2. track compliance and supply chain risks within their tier 1 suppliers
  3. authenticate the identities of their Compliance Officers in relation to their companies
  4. increase the transparency of their larger (and smaller!) buyers, reducing their supply chain risk.

Only your suppliers will see that you've added them to your dashboard, if they have also been fully authenticated via one of the subscription methods. Similarly, you as a supplier will only be able to see which private buyers are monitoring your transparency on TISCreport if they have been fully authenticated, giving you complete peace of mind on confidentiality and security. 

As Section 54 requires you to report what steps you are taking, joining the TISCreport community for monitoring your supply chains is a zero or low cost step that you can report in your next Modern Slavery Statement.

You can see all the local government bodies that have shared their supply chains on our new transparency map: https://tiscreport.org/public-sector/uk-transparency-report/

Many big brands have also shared their supply chains as open data. This trend is set to continue and accelerate.

For affiliate membership, how are the logo and code used?

The code provided is a unique piece of HTML code which will need to be placed somewhere on the homepage of your website. 

The HTML code itself is the Affiliate TISCreport logo with a unique reference to your company so TISCreport can verify the logo has been installed correctly. You can choose a light or dark version of the logo from within your account (be sure to copy the code again after selecting the colour). Most companies have chosen to place the logo in their footer alongside the link to their modern slavery statement.

Your web developer will need to add the code to your website's HTML template file in order for the logo to be displayed in the browser.

Once your code is added to your website it will enable our AI bots to continue to track compliance with Section 54 of the UK Modern Slavery Act whilst simultaneously partially authenticating your user account for your company without needing to charge for full membership.

The purpose of the code and logo method is twofold: the first is to authenticate in an automated (and therefore free!) way that the officer uploading the statement is sufficiently authorised to do so. The second is to enable us to keep track of the official website where future statements will be kept. Our bots will be able to definitively prove compliance annually knowing that the websites authenticated are officially where statements ought to be. 

I've shared my statement with the modern slavery registry via your site but it has not appeared there. Did something go wrong?

No, we get email confirmations for each submission and if for any reason the submission fails, our systems try again until they succeed. Do contact us if you would like us to find the confirmation email. 

Do I have to pay for a subscription to submit my modern slavery statement as the Home Office has requested?

No! There are four ways to add statements for your company and subsidiaries if you have them, and three of them are free:

Anonymous submissions (free & anonymous): 

Simply search for your company using the public search on the home page of https://tiscreport.org/

E.g. Starbucks: https://tiscreport.org/company/gb/02959325
Paste in the link of the statement and follow the instructions as “a member of the public”. Your statement will then go into a queue for processing, by both automated checks and by human eye. The only drawback of this is that it will not show with a high level of confidence on your public profile because our systems could not verify that the statement was uploaded by an authorised officer of the company. Some potential buyers use anonymous submissions as an indicator of low transparency but it will be up to them to contact you with their expectations either via TISCreport or independently.

Register without authenticating (free):
This enables you to register with your corporate email address, upload a statement and inform your buyers on the system that an unauthenticated statement has been uploaded. It will add your statement to the end of the processing queue for automated and manual checks. But again, this route will attach a low confidence level as the systems would not be able to verify that the statement was uploaded by an authorised officer of the company. You may start receiving encouragement messages from your buyers on the system to complete the authentication process, as this increases their own supply chain transparency.

Submission By Affiliate membership (also free):
a) Register via: https://tiscreport.org/user/register
b) Click on your workspace: https://tiscreport.org/workspace
c) Add your company, click “Select a Subscription to Validate & instantly save changes”
d) click “Affiliate Free account” and validate as affiliate using one of the two methods outlined (authentication by logo and code, or by asking your suppliers to authenticate you via your dashboard). Your largest (£36M+ turnover) suppliers will already be in the system.
e) Upload your statement
f) Add your next subsidiary and repeat free authentication method.
g) Once your compliance panic is over, check out your workspace for each of your subsidiaries. You can analyse your supply chain against the free and paid-for data subscriptions we have!

Submission by paid membership (extremely good value for companies taking transparency seriously!):
The pricing structure for this is £200+VAT for up to two subsidiaries, £400+VAT for up to 5 companies, £1500+VAT for up to 20 subsidiaries.

a) Register via: https://tiscreport.org/user/register
b) Click on your workspace: https://tiscreport.org/workspace
c) add in your leading Group company and click “Select a Subscription to Validate & instantly save changes”
d) Select the appropriate membership for your group
e) for groups with 10 plus paid memberships, send us your list and we will set up your workspace for you and guide you through our simple authentication service!
f) Take a look at the compliance of your suppliers so that you can report your baseline for next year’s MSA statement.

What are the Home Office's strict criteria for a section 54 compliance audit?

The Home office has recently produced more detailed compliance criteria for Section 54 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015.

These are reflected in their more recent guidance that can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/publish-an-annual-modern-slavery-statement

We also provide a service to assess a companies compliance and produce a report detailing any actions you may need to take based on our own interpretation of these criteria.

We have updated our statement. How do we update it on our TISCreport profile?

If you are a fully authenticated member simply log in and follow the instructions below:

1) Once logged in, click "Workspace"

2) Click the "SUBMIT STATEMENT" button next to your listed organisation.

4) You can then either add the URL of your statement or upload a copy of your statement using the "Upload File" or "Web address" buttons respectively.

5) If you are uploading a file, use the document browser to locate the correct file, select it and then click "Upload". Answer the questions in the process and ensure that you enter the appropriate financial year.

6) Click "Attach Statement" and ensure that you've selected the right financial year when filling out the details for the statement.

7) and finally "Finish And Save". This will ensure that your newly uploaded statement will replace the version for that same financial year.

If you are a free or affiliate member follow the same instructions above and your statement will be added to the queue for manual checking. It will appear as soon as it has been processed.